Kitchen Renovation!

When we bought our house, we envisioned a kitchen reno. We may not have known the timeline, but we figured it was coming. Over two years into home ownership, and the time has COME! Not to mention the months of planning before this week!

In my last post I detailed out the design choices we made, and in this post, I will provide photographic evidence of our journey. As you may know, my father-in-law is a general contractor, specializing in home renovations, and my husband is quite handy! This process has been, and will be, all us (really, him & dad), excluding laying tile.

Here’s pictures from the house listing, before we bought it. Notice the terrible hardware!

Here’s how the kitchen looked when we visited the property during our house hunt.

Chris took care of the demolition. If you can’t tell, the cabinets were built into the kitchen, they are not pre-fab, so Chris has to rip each out piece by piece. Then the floor had to come up, which included the laminate roll and the underlayment to reveal our subfloor. This also included ripping up baseboards, getting new water pipe valves, and re-plastering some dry wall damaged in the process. I helped by painting the walls and trim after the demo. Here’s where we were at before the tile guy came:

Big empty space! First step after this, is to get the tile down. It took the tile guy 2 days plus one morning, and here’s what the space looks like with flooring (and painting):

My father-in-law arrived the same day the floor was finished (the back corner by the door was last to go in, last to be grouted). Then they got to work!

Day 1 (half day): Top Cabinets go up

Day 2: Bottom cabinets go in (including re-routing an air duct, and setting up new water lines for the fridge and dish washer)

My fridge now makes ice, and our dish washer ran the morning of Day 3!! They put most of the shelves up inside the cabinets, and we’ve started filling them up and planning what will go where. The egg cartons are already in the angled cabinet by the back door!

Day 3: Hardware went on (I helped!), putting up the microwave and vent through the roof, and barn wood shelf placement.

Day 4: The last full day my father-in-law is in town. Finishing touches and the molding. The crown molding was the hardest bit, as our ceilings are far from level, so it took a little elbow grease and ingenuity to get them looking proper. Counter top supplier came in to measure, installation is a week from today.

Day 5: We actually wrapped up on Day 4, so that on Day 5 we could wake up easy, get breakfast, then head to the airport. Here’s Chris and my father-in-law, proud of all their hard work:

Rightfully proud of the labor, ingenuity, and effort that went into our beautiful new kitchen!

I am SO grateful to have such a hard working husband, and have always known his dad can put a steam engine to shame, as well. We could not have accomplished this feat without his dad’s decades of professional experience renovating houses, because our 1950’s house did not make it easy on us. His willingness to fly out to us and help us non-stop for four days is the only reason our kitchen came together so beautifully. We are now one new kitchen, and many small tools richer.

Here are pictures at night, because I couldn’t wait the second I got home and the counter tops were on!!